Housing recession--says who? Certainly not Roost, the newest real estate search engine to hit the market. Unlike hybrid home buying info sites like Trulia and Zillow, Roost is focused on search, plain and simple, with an interface that is quite similar to travel search engine Kayak. Users will find data from various local listings services and real estate agents, and can sort it according to criteria like price, school district and number of bedrooms.

Currently in public beta, Roost covers 14 markets, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston and Portland, as well as various locales in northern and southern ...Read the whole story...

UK-based Video Search News will host the first annual Video Search Summit on April 8 and 9 in San Francisco. Speakers like Pixsy CEO Chase Norlin and Suranga Chandratiilake, CEO of Blinkx, will be on hand to discuss the myriad issues that Webmasters face when trying to maximize the impact of online video, including indexation problems, legal battles, as well as the search vs. browsing debate.

Discussions at the Video Search Summit will also address tactical issues, like how to incorporate Flash-based clips in search, how to broker syndication deals, as well as how to optimize videos for ...Read the whole story...

Traffic, traffic, traffic, Anthony Kirlew says that before you even address the "how do I get more traffic to a Web site" question, you need to answer some fundamental questions about the site itself, starting with "Why would someone want to visit it?"

Whether it's a blog, an e-commerce site, or just a company boilerplate and some management profiles, every site needs a purpose. So if you don't have products to advertise, and can't or don't see a need to develop articles, then create a customer review section or throw up funny pictures of the COO--in other words, ...Read the whole story...

Phil Bradley reviews Galaxy IT, a new search engine currently in alpha phase that aims to visualize search. Specifically, the Fresno, Calif.-based company presents search results as a set of 8 boxes that surround your query. You can refine results with tabs like video, images and news, and zoom in or out to see more clusters of results (each in groups of 9 boxes).

The problem with this interface, Bradley says, is that it quickly creates a cluttered screen with no room for the necessary info like URL or description. You can mouse over the boxes and ...Read the whole story...

Knowing how to set boundaries is not just a must for a healthy personal life, it's important for businesses as well--particularly when it comes to the scope of SEM projects. From creating a new PPC campaign (complete with keyword research and testing), to optimizing blog posts, to tweaking the copy on a specific landing page--every task needs to fit into the scope of work for a client, or the effort expended can quickly outweigh the service fees.

Including a "Goals and Scope" document with every client's contract can go a long way toward helping account managers and strategists ...Read the whole story...